Payroll Giving in action as Arriva London goes for a Diamond Award in 2018

Doing the right thing, one of our four brand values, is what we have been doing for the last six years by encouraging all of our employees to give to their favourite charities through our Payroll Giving scheme - during this time, they have given more than £1,000,000 pounds to over 160 charities.

As part of the support process, we place £1,000 in a fund each quarter and give our Payroll Givers the chance to win four cheques of £250 to give to their chosen charity - every giver is automatically entered.

In 2017, we won the Charity Aid Foundation’s coveted Platinum Award for having over twenty percent of our staff in the scheme: the only bus company to have achieved this. This year, the bar has been placed even higher with the introduction of CAF’s new 'Diamond Award', which requires over thirty percent of staff to be in the scheme.

Our target for 2018 is to at least maintain our Platinum status, but to encourage enough new staff to join Payroll Giving so that we reach the thirty percent level and achieve the 'Diamond Award'.

The campaign theme again is 'It's easy to give with Payroll Giving, your colleagues do it every day' which will be promoted through weekly road shows at each of the company’s seventeen London garages, together with poster and video campaigns, telling givers' stories.

This year, we also plan to invite charities that are supported by our staff to visit our garages to meet with our givers, and we have already booked a place in November's Lord Mayor's Show - where traditionally we have one of our Heritage Fleet buses accompanied by at least forty of our Payroll Givers, to show the public what Payroll Giving In Action is all about, and celebrate our success.

Our platinum bus, HV 64, will again be out on routes across the Capital, repeating the Platinum Payroll Giving message, and we will continue to develop the campaign with new giver's stories both on this website and with our video messages.

Arriva London’s Dartford garage was recently the venue for a continuation of a TfL initiative, inviting disability awareness groups to Arriva London garages, for open discussions about the difficulties of travelling on London buses for people with disabilities.

A new idea to turn older diesel engine buses into much more environmentally friendly vehicles has been developed. The basic idea behind the unit, is that the old diesel unit that currently drives the wheels is removed, and a retrofit diesel/electric hybrid is fitted.

Arriva London is always happy to try and accommodate our customers’ requirements, so we were delighted to receive this thank you note from ten-year-old Jeremy, following his visit with his parents to Arriva’s Grays garage yesterday.

At Arriva London, we are always interested in unusual requests for the use of our fleet, and are regular suppliers of buses to accommodate rail replacement work. However, we are pleased to announce that we have been able to satisfy a more unusual request for the use of one of our Heritage Fleet buses as the temporary ticket office for a miniature railway station in Kent.